Untamed - Glennon Doyle Page 0,4

were red, white, and blue. All the bottles on the left side were pink and purple.

I picked up a red bottle from what was clearly my son’s side. It was tall, rectangular, bulky. It yelled at me in bold red, white, and blue letters:

3X BIGGER,

DOESN’T ROB YOU OF YOUR DIGNITY,

ARMOR UP IN MAN SCENT,

DROP-KICK DIRT, THEN SLAM ODOR WITH A FOLDING CHAIR.

I thought: What the hell? Is my son taking a shower or preparing for war in here?

I picked up one of the girls’ slim, metallic, pink bottles. Instead of barking marching orders at me, that bottle, in cursive, flowy font, whispered disconnected adjectives: alluring, radiant, gentle, pure, illuminating, enticing, touchable, light, creamy. Not a verb to be found. Nothing to do here, just a list of things to be.

I looked around for a moment to ensure that the shower was not, in fact, a magic portal that had somehow transported me back in time. Nope. There I was, in the twenty-first century, when boys are still being taught that real men are big, bold, violent, invulnerable, disgusted by femininity, and responsible for conquering women and the world. When girls are still being taught that real women must be quiet, pretty, small, passive, and desirable so they’ll be worthy of being conquered. Here we all are. Our sons and daughters are still being shamed out of their full humanity before they even get dressed in the morning.

Our children are too vast to fit themselves inside these rigid, mass-produced bottles. But they’ll lose themselves trying.

Several years ago, my daughter Tish’s teacher called and said that there was a “situation” at school. During a discussion about wildlife, she’d mentioned to the class that polar bears were losing their homes and food sources because of the melting ice caps. She showed the students a photo of a dying polar bear as an example of the many effects of global warming.

The rest of the kindergarteners thought that this was sad information but not sad enough to keep them from, you know, soldiering on to recess. Not Tish. The teacher reported to me that when the lesson ended and the other kids popped off the carpet to run outside, Tish remained seated, alone, mouth wide open, stunned into paralysis, her little shocked face asking:

“WHAT? Did you just say the polar bears are dying? Because the Earth is melting? The same Earth that we live on? Did you just drop that little tidbit of terror ON US AT CIRCLE TIME?”

Tish eventually made it outside, but was unable to participate in recess that day. The other kids tried to get her off the bench to play four square with them, but she remained close to her teacher, wide-eyed, asking, “Do the grown-ups know about this? What are they going to do? Are other animals in trouble, too? Where is that hungry polar bear’s mom?”

For the next month, our family’s life revolved around polar bears. We bought polar bear posters and papered Tish’s wall with them. “To remember, Mom—I’ve got to remember.” We sponsored four polar bears online. We talked about polar bears at dinner, at breakfast, during car pool, and at parties. We discussed polar bears so incessantly, in fact, that after a few weeks I began to hate polar bears with every fiber of my being. I began to rue the day that polar bears were ever born. I tried everything I could think of to yank Tish out of her polar bear abyss. I coddled her, I snapped at her, and finally I just lied to her.

I asked a friend to send me an “official” email pretending to be the “President of Antarctica,” announcing that, once and for all, the ice caps were fixed and all the polar bears were suddenly A-OK. I opened that fraudulent email and called to Tish in her room, “Oh my gosh, baby! Come here! Look what I just got! Good news!” Tish read the email silently, then turned slowly toward me with a scathing look of scorn. She knew the email was fake because she is sensitive, not stupid. The polar bear saga continued, full force.

One night I tucked Tish into bed and was tiptoeing out of her room with the joy of a mother who is almost to the promised land. (Everybody’s asleep and I’ve got my couch and carbs and Netflix and no one is allowed to touch me or talk to me until the sun rises, hallelujah.) I was closing the door behind me